


Litmus

by miinyuu



Category: F. T. Island
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-01
Updated: 2012-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-13 02:46:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miinyuu/pseuds/miinyuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lee Hongki might have questioned his sexuality before, but this is a whole different story. He can't get this stupid drummer maknae out of  his head. He hopes it'll pass; it's too taboo and too weird even for him to deal with. But if these feelings don't go away, what is he supposed to do?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Litmus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Camila-unnie](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Camila-unnie).



> Some light Honghwan fluff about how they got together~ There’s such a lack of a fandom for these two… This isn’t my greatest work, but give it a try?

Hongki would be lying if he said he’d never questioned his sexuality.

When he got bored, he liked to search for things fans made involving the band. He found fantaken photos, Photoshop edits, drawings, and of course, fanfiction. He never had enough time to spare (or the attention span) to read a full story, but he’d often skim plot summaries out of sheer curiosity.

He quickly found that a large majority of them involved people in the group in relationships with one another. Especially after having recently filmed a scene about this for You’re Beautiful, he expected it. He found it amusing, and sometimes just a bit frightening. He also soon discovered that a huge chunk of these fanfictions were about him and Jonghoon. He eventually came to the conclusion that it made sense, seeing from an outside perspective how skinshippy he really was with his best friend. He’d laughed about these stories with Jonghoon a few times, but he never let it slip that there might be a grain of truth to some of them.

He didn’t like Jonghoon, not like that. Hongki figured that much out on his own. Of course they never dated or had sex like in some of the stories. But the fanfictions, the fan drawings, they did make him hyper-aware of his own actions. His thoughts too, even, he started realizing a lot more about himself. So maybe he did see some guys in the same way as he saw girls. Did that have to be such a bad thing, so long as he kept it to himself?

He was almost always paired with Jonghoon, or occasionally Jaejin. Anything else was rare. So if he apparently never showed it, if the fans never saw it… why was he always thinking of Minhwan? 

Hongki couldn’t figure out if it had started more recently, or if he always felt this way, but only started to realize it once he began to question himself. Of course the two had been good friends for ages, but lately… something was different. Maybe he was overthinking things. All the fanfiction was going to his head. Minhwan was like his little brother, he couldn’t possibly like him in a romantic way.

Whatever the case, Hongki wanted to be closer to the younger boy, in some way. He’d be a better hyung to him, look over him. That sort of thing.

—-

One day, they had a photoshoot for the Litmus catalog. When they first entered the building, a chill hit them all but didn’t seem to go away. Perhaps because it wasn’t a chill so much as the room where the photoshoot was taking place was just absolutely freezing. Goosebumps and all, the five boys were quickly carted off to an area just away from where the first round of pictures was to be taken. Suddenly, they knew why it was so cold. They were given thick, heavy winter jackets, scarves, hoodies, and other winter gear to put on before being led back to the area with the camera all set up and ready.

Some group photos were taken, plenty of solo pictures of each boy, and then the camera crew began directing smaller groups of two or three to be in pictures together. The last of these pairs planned was Hongki and Jonghoon. Once the two had finished, Jonghoon jogged off the ‘stage’ to meet the others right away. Hongki remained in place for a moment, stretching his arms out after having them so stiffly posed for such a long time. He looked to the side to see the rest of the group, including Minhwan, who was scratching his head. Hongki always seemed to have to remind him not to fix his hair when they were doing photoshoots. Or itch his head. Or rub his eyes. Or lick his lips in the rare occasion when they had makeup on there too. The makeup artists and hairstylists hated nothing more than when the boys went and ruined their hard work.

“Minhwan!” he yelled, causing the maknae to jump a bit, lifting his shoulders up in surprise. He turned around to see Hongki glaring at him, and he immediately knew what he meant. Minhwan dropped his hand and gave an apologetic pout, bowing slightly. “Sorry Hyung.” Hongki wouldn’t admit it to even himself, but he thought it was a bit… cute. He shook the thought off and was just about to move from his place still on the set when the cameraman cut in with “Yes, that’s perfect!” All five boys and a few others in the crew turned to him, both surprised and curious. “Minhwan, get back on stage. We’ll have you pose with Hongki.”

Minhwan did as he was told and met up with his hyung again. The two gave their jackets to a woman who placed them out of the way and began to pose in the hoodies they were left in. They were given little instruction, so the two awkwardly leaned on each other this way and that, standing close, touching shoulders, whatever they thought of.

“No, no, get closer together!” Hongki looked to Minhwan and gave a half-shrug before throwing his arm around his dongsaeng. They shifted just slightly in this pose as several pictures were taken from slightly different angles. Hongki felt something odd in the pit of his stomach, but tried his best to ignore it. Just as they were finishing up that series of shots and Hongki could distance himself from Minhwan again, he realized what caused his ‘stomach pains.’ He suddenly felt better, and it somehow dawned on him just then as to why.

He had a crush on Minhwan.

He lay in bed that night, unable to sleep. He kept flipping over, side to side to back to stomach to putting his pillow at the other end of the bed… nothing worked. His mind just wouldn’t settle down. How did he go from being straight to all of a sudden having a crush on one of his own bandmates? Let alone one of the ones that apparently no one ever expected. Maybe if he had a crush on Jonghoon he’d be more comfortable with it, however that made sense (he thought it did, somehow). But he didn’t. He was starting to have genuine feelings for Choi Minhwan, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

—-

After a while, he started to wonder if the others could see it. Hongki tried his best to hide it from everyone, especially Minhwan, but unfortunately for him, hiding his emotions was never his strong point.

His strong point was, and he cursed himself for this, loyalty. When he liked someone, he didn’t stray. This wasn’t so much of a problem when Hongki liked girls. He’d dated before, he didn’t hide it from his family, his friends, or even the fans. He’d admitted to having girlfriends before. So when he liked someone for a while, he asked her out. But that couldn’t happen in this case. He was trapped, waiting it out, seeing how long until his feelings went away.

Unfortunately, when you get to see the object of your affections almost literally every day for years on end, it isn’t so easy to get rid of your feelings.

So what was he left to do? Hongki couldn’t admit how he felt, and it obviously wasn’t going away. He was going crazy not doing anything about it, so he had to take action… he just had to be subtle about it.

He started doing all kinds of little things. Nobody paid much attention to it, especially since Hongki was always pretty big on skinship to begin with. But it made him happy. He’d sit closer to Minhwan when they did interviews, he’d talk to him a little more, he might share some of his food… it was the little things.

The only one that noticed was Minhwan. It took him a while, but at one point he did manage to figure it out. After a bit of thinking, that is.

One day they had some free time and Hongki decided to go out for ice cream. It was hot, he was hungry, why not? Just as he was about to leave, Hongki turned to Minhwan, on the couch a few feet away watching TV, and asked him if he wanted to tag along. He took the opportunity, but later on wondered why he was the only one invited: Jaejin was on the same couch, even closer to their hyung, and Seunghyun and Jonghoon were both visible in the next room as well. Why just him? Chance?

He was going to just brush it off as a random choice. He didn’t think much of it, why would he? But Minhwan had a tendency to overthink things late at night when he knew he had to get to bed, they had to get up early in the morning, but he just couldn’t seem to get to sleep. So his mind drifted, thinking over the day, the week… then he snapped back to earlier that day, wondering why Hongki chose him. It started just as a passing thought, but other things started to come to mind.

 _Hongki-hyung never used to share his food with anybody, but he let me have some of his ice cream to try… the new flavour was pretty good though._ He shook his head, as if connecting the physical motion to his brushing off the irrelevant bits of his train of thoughts.  _And he’s been talking to me more than even Jonghoon-hyung lately… He’s been hugging me more lately too, hasnt he…? And he always stands by me in photoshoots, sits by me at fanmeets… he never used to do any of that…_  

There were too many coincidences in a row for him to just brush it off. So these scattered events floated around in his mind, sometimes clicking together, sometimes bouncing off one another and breaking other ties. He eventually fell asleep, deeming it too much to think about with another Litmus photoshoot so early the next morning. He should have been asleep well over an hour ago.

—-

Minhwan woke up to his alarm bright and early the next morning, before the sun had even fully risen. For some reason, he actually felt awake. Of course not fully, but more than most days when he woke up. Instead of waging war with the ‘snooze’ button like most mornings, he managed to turn the alarm off properly and get out of bed before anyone else. While the other four members groaned and fumbled around to hit the alarm, begging it for five more minutes of sleep, Minhwan got dressed and started to feed the puppies who had also woken up, surprised at the sound of one of the boys mysteriously already awake.

Still a bit drowsy, his mind skipped around a bit before finally coming back to the topic of his thoughts the night before. He couldn’t come up with much of an explanation and decided to leave it alone again. Seunghyun stumbled into the room as Minhwan put the last of the food bowls on the floor, skirting around him to grab a bowl and a box of cereal, still in his boxers and an old t-shirt.

The other members eventually woke up, shuffling around the house to eat, get dressed, brush their teeth… the usual. Minhwan never got to really see it from the outside, but it really was a miracle how quickly the five (or in this case, four) of them went from bedhead and underwear to completely presentable and ready for a photoshoot. Of course they’d get their hair and makeup done professionally soon enough, but they got themselves pretty damn close.

A few hours later and they were in the midst of the newest Litmus fall/winter photoshoot. They’d moved on to the winter clothing already, and were about to do a group photo of the band plus the female model they had for the day. Minhwan took notice of the fact that Hongki stood next to him for the photo, but again couldn’t connect a reason why. The cameraman told them to pose and Hongki put his arm around Minhwan, resting it on his opposite shoulder.

The younger smiled for the photo and the light went off once, but before any more could be taken, Hongki leaned in close to Minhwan, tilting his head and making it look like they were kissing. It was a small joke he could have done with anyone, or at least Hongki hoped that was how it would look. He held the pose for a second and suddenly the pieces in Minhwan’s head drew together like magnets and all clicked together at once. Hongki liked him. He  _liked_  him.

He couldn’t explain why to this day other than it being a sudden impulse decision, but at the very last second before Hongki pulled away, Minhwan closed the (hardly even a centimeter) gap between them and kissed his hyung’s lips, just for a split second.

Hongki pulled away and turned back to the camera, smiling big and laughing a bit. Minhwan did the same, first laughing about what just happened and then having to fake the continued smile once he realized what he just did.

—-

 _It was just a joke._  

He kept telling himself that.

 _It was just a joke, and all I did was add to it. That’s it._  Minhwan sat with his thoughts again that night. As he beat himself up for doing something  _he_  didn’t even expect from  _himself_ , Hongki was seeing the indicent in much better light. A bit later in getting to bed, he smiled as he brushed his teeth, thinking how he got a kiss from Minhwan, even if it was just two friends joking around. It was something, and that was all he really needed. Of course he wanted more, but he’d long given up on that. He was happy about what happened, even if he thought it was kind of dumb to be excited over such a thing.

Minhwan’s thoughts somehow shifted from what he did, to how Hongki felt about him, and finally to how he in turn felt about Hongki. He’d always been close to his hyung. He really saw all of them as his older brothers; he was close to each of the members. But now that he was in full overanalyzing mode, he was beginning to realize that he’d always been a little bit closer to Hongki than anyone else.

Even if Minhwan did spend a lot of time with Seunghyun since he joined, he always seemed to simply gravitate to Hongki too. Maybe it was the fact that Hongki was the oldest and he was the youngest. Hongki liked to pick on the maknae, but it was always in good fun. He’d had a fair amount of skinship with him before, but it never felt in any way—

He once again shook his head, stopping his thoughts from continuing. Sure he might have been growing closer to Hongki lately, but that was Hongki’s fault. He’d been trying more to spend time with Minhwan and that was why.

_…but does it really matter?_

He thought those words loud and clear, above any others. It was like his mind was at war with itself, and that was the atomic bomb. It stopped everything else and made him pause all thought for a minute. Minhwan sat up in bed, then having the biggest realization of all. Even if it was Hongki’s fault, he still felt a lot closer to him. A  _lot_ closer. It felt… different. And Minhwan still kissed him, without even thinking about it.

That was what got to him about his own actions, that he didn’t think about it. Even if he had a passing  _‘ooh, this will be funny’_  beforehand, he would have felt a lot better about the whole thing and maybe he’d be asleep by now, moving on past this all. But no, he did it just because it felt like the right thing to do.

Minhwan let out a deep sigh and combed his fingers through his hair, then stood up and opened the door, leaving his room and closing it behind him. He was on his way to Hongki’s room when he saw the light on to the bathroom and the door open. Being in a dorm full of guys he’d learned not to look when this happened, but seeing as he heard someone gargling mouthwash, he assumed it would be okay. Naturally, there was the boy he’d been looking for, spitting the blue liquid into the sink. Minhwan stepped into the bathroom beside him as he wiped his mouth off, turning to face the younger boy.

“Uh, hyung…”

Again Minhwan had acted on impulse. His feet moved him here but his brain hadn’t even had time to think of what he was going to say. He began anyway with a nervous, “Uhm, about earlier… the photoshoot…” He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say. Was he going to clear up that it didn’t mean anything? Did he want to make  _sure_  it didn’t? Did he want to know why Hongki did it in the first place?

Although Minhwan had been lately, if anyone was one to act on impulse, it was Hongki. Before Minhwan could stutter out any more sentence fragments, Hongki’s mind skipped to wishful thinking mode and in the blink of a maknae’s eye, Hongki had moved in and kissed Minhwan again. With one hand on Minhwan’s arm, Hongki closed his eyes and pressed their lips together, this time making it last longer. When he stepped back he looked for a reaction, of any kind, from Minhwan.

Which he got a complete lack of. Minhwan just stood there, in shock, with no idea what to make of what just happened. Hongki immediately took this as rejection and swallowed hard, assuming he just ruined his friendship and made everything awkward. ‘ _What if he tells the other members?_ ’ came to mind as well. “Sorry,” he muttered under his breath, walking off back to his room.

—-

Minhwan had never in his life done as much thinking as he did that night. Their schedule had ended early, so they were in bed close to 11 so they could wake up early again the next morning. Minhwan didn’t get to sleep until almost 3AM, meaning he had hardly three hours of sleep to run on the next day.

Minhwan’s cloudy morning-thinking didn’t get in the way the next day, however, as he came to a definite conclusion that night as to how he felt and what he was going to do.

So after waking up and getting dressed, Minhwan went into the kitchen to find Jonghoon and Hongki already eating breakfast. Jonghoon looked up and nodded to Minhwan in greeting, while Hongki stayed focused on his scrambled eggs as if they were the only thing he was ever allowed to look at again. Minhwan skipped the cupboards of food and instead made a beeline for his oldest hyung, tapping him on the arm when he got close enough. Hongki didn’t look up, so Minhwan grabbed his arm and pulled him towards him, signaling for him to get up. Jonghoon looked on, confused, and Hongki finally stood up, looking Minhwan in the eye for the first time that day.

Hongki’s expression was completely blank. It hinted at being upset in some way, but it was impossible to tell if it was based in anger, sadness, embarrassment, or something else. Minhwan returned the look with a sad, almost sympathetic expression of his own. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” He was planning on bringing Hongki back to the elder’s room to talk alone, but instead Jonghoon quickly took the hint and got up, jogging into the other bedroom, most likely to tell Jaejin and Seunghyun not to go into the kitchen just yet. Jonghoon closed the door behind him, leaving the two alone.

After a bit of a pause, Minhwan took a deep breath and began with a short “Last night—”

“I’m sorry, okay? I don’t know what happened.” Hongki looked down at the floor, no longer able to meet Minhwan’s eyes. “Just don’t tell the other guys…”

“Why not?” Minhwan asked, keeping his tone flat. He had a bit of a plan, and while Hongki was going along with it nicely, he was also getting more and more upset. He felt bad, but there was no way he was just going to be able to say it just yet.

“What do you mean ‘why not?’ ” Hongki looked back up, his expression filled with disbelief and now a hint of anger. His voice rose as he continued. “It’s embarrassing enough, and I can’t have them knowing I’m… like this…! I can’t do that sort of thing with our group members, I know. I don’t know what the hell came over me. But please don’t tell them…” His eyes were watering a bit, but he wasn’t going to cry. When Hongki got  _really_  mad, which was rare, but it did happen, his eyes would water. It was an odd thing to see, but it signaled to Minhwan that he had to butt in now and calm him down before he lost him completely.

“But, hyung…” He paused, trying to either remember the wording he came up with the night before, or think of something similar on ther spot that still sounded okay.  He quickly chose the first thing he could think of, a little upset he couldn’t think of anything less cliché. “What if I feel the same way…?”

Hongki stood there, eyes drifting off and not focusing on anything, his mind simply not working at all. It took a few seconds to even register with him what he had even said, and even then, all he could do was look up and mutter a short, “Huh?”

Minhwan bit his lip, trying to think of how to explain, before he got a sudden case of word vomit. “I don’t know, I just… I’ve felt a lot closer to you lately, and we’ve always been such good friends, and I kind of… realized you liked me the other day, I dunno, it just hit me, and I was thinking about it and then you pretended to kiss me and I just went with it and I couldn’t figure out why I did that and then I went to talk to you about it and you did  _that_  and I just…” a long pause, “…thought.”

Hongki didn’t move an inch, his body frozen, only letting him move his lips just enough for a quick, “And?”

“I don’t know, I… I mean, if you want to… try to… you know…” he swallowed hard, having difficulty actually saying the proper words, with them feeling foreign all of a sudden speaking to a good friend like Hongki, “go out… I wouldn’t… mind trying…”

Hongki just stared for a few seconds, then finally got his words back. “Are you serious…?”

“Ne,” Minhwan nodded, now smiling, picking up on the sudden change in atmosphere. “As long as you want to.”

“Waahh!” Hongki suddenly yelled, springing forward and throwing his arms around his dongsaeng. He hugged him tight, Minhwan smiling bigger and returning it. When Hongki pulled back, he glanced to the side as something caught his eye, which turned out to be Seunghyun peeking out from the bedroom door. Hongki looked back to Minhwan with a terrified look. Seunghyun swung the door open the rest of the way, assuming it was okay since he’d already been seen.

“So what happened in here?” he asked, and the new couple looked to one another, having no idea how they were going to explain this to the others. Seunghyun looked genuinely curious, as did the others emerging from the room behind him. They figured they at least hadn’t heard the main bits of their conversation.

“Nothing, nothing!” Hongki smiled, waving his hand and sitting back down to finish his breakfast.

That would be an adventure for another day, they decided.


End file.
